CHAPTER VI

AUGUST 1939

Until September 1939, few people in Britain believed that a second
world war was inevitable. There was still hope, springing perhaps from
the need of human beings to go on, from day to day, thinking, reasoning
and believing. There was, too, insensibility and inertness, sometimes
caused by fear and sometimes resulting from a desire to lessen anxiety
or avoid thought. There also deception: self deception, social
deception. How much blindness there was, what produced it, and why it
spread among so many peoples and invaded so many spheres of human
activity, its no part of the task of the present writer to assess.
Future historians will have to try to understand the hearts and minds
of the generation between the two wars.

The point has been made, and deserves fresh emphasis here, that no
one,
in or out of Government, knew that another world war was inevitable.
The record of the discussions, the plans, and the preparations, that
has filled the early chapters of this book, needs to be read with this
in mind. Unless it is so read the nature of the problem of preparing
for a possible future war in the circumstances of the nineteen-thirties
will be misunderstood. It was of course relatively easy to draw plans
on paper. What was not so easy was to translate these plans into
reality which, more often than not, meant requisitioning buildings,
directing men and women to various duties and buying equipment. The
task of expanding, in peacetime, the Armed Forces of the Crown was not
intrinsically so difficult as that of switching a large section of
then nation's social institutions and social service on to a war
footing before war had broken out. The Government had not, neither did
it seek, the necessary powers of compulsion and direction. The absence
of certain legal sanctions handicapped the preparation of the emergency
services. The passage of the Civil Defence Act in July 1939 did indeed
allow more progress to be made, but the testing time followed within a
few weeks of this extension—itself severely limited—of the Government's
planning powers.

The Government's plans were based on the widely held belief that
the
war would open with an immediate onslaught by the enemy's air arm. The
objective would be to attack civilian society and undermine the
nation's will to fight. It was expected that London, the nerve-centre
of Government and the home of on-fifth of the people, would suffer
first.

No longer would there be, as in past wars, an interval of time in which
the nation, without hindrance from its enemies, could mobilise,

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build up its wartime services, gear up production of stores
and equipment and switch its economy to a war basis. The bomber had
abolished this period. Hospitals, ambulances, casualty trains,
evacuation hostels, shelters, rest centres, mortuaries, relief offices,
feeding centres, all fully equipped and manned, would be needed by
civilians immediately the attack began.1

To provide all these new services, ready to go into action at
once,
would create in peacetime a great deal of disruption—even if the
necessary powers of compulsion were granted by the nation. If both
Government and people had accepted the inevitability of war and if they
had known when it was due to start, the task would have been infinitely
easier.

But this was not to be. Plans and preparations had to be built up
in
quite a different fashion. The preceding chapters on hospitals, rest
centres and evacuation had illustrated some of the difficulties, and
have shown how plans were developed in a piecemeal way, and why
progress was often slow and faltering. These measures to help and
protect civilian society against a new form of warfare were not
directed by a 'General Staff'. No Cabinet committee maintained a
continuous watch over the social services. No research was conducted
into the effects of bombing on the apparatus of civilian life. No
comprehensive study was made of the social consequences that might
flow from the kind of war that the Government expected. Inadequate
factual knowledge and an inadequate endeavour to acquire it, a deep
ignorance of social relationships and a shallow interest in social
research—these things were later to handicap the work of Government
Departments. By the middle of 1939 these departments were already
committed to undertake, in the event of war, some novel tasks. Within
eighteen months they were to enter many other provinces which, in
peacetime, had been curtained off from any intrusion by the State.

The passing of the Civil Defence Act in July 1939 was the signal
for greater progress to be made in the practical working out of plans.
During August, many central departments were feverishly engaged in
assembling the machinery of wartime administration. The Ministry of
Health and Department of Health for Scotland, hitherto concerned with
watching and supervising the work of local authorities, were now faced
with the possibility of having to administer and operate a large range
of emergency services. Moreover, in certain fields, such as evacuation,
they would now have to exercise much closer control over the work of
local bodies. A start was therefore

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made in selecting staff to strengthen existing regional
offices, or to establish such branches in the defence regions as part
of the Government's arrangements for regional commissioners.2
The
Ministry of Health had to set up a small replica of itself in each
region, composed of administrators, doctors, architects, and
specialists
in housing, accountancy, water supplies and other matters. A large
number of civil servants were now to be sent out of their offices and
into the field to acquire personal experience of local conditions, to
meet and talk to local government officers, and to see hospitals,
maternity homes, welfare clinics and other social services in action.

The Unemployment Assistance Board (later renamed the Assistance
Board)
was also busy during August in planning the movement of staff. In the
event of war, many of the Board's local offices would require
strengthening, while plans had to be made for the opening of 605 new
offices in various parts of Britain. Arrangements were made for about
2,400 of the Board's staff to be transferred to new stations to cope
with emergency work. The responsibility for administering a national
scheme of cash aid for certain classes of the war distressed had been
placed on the Board, which was also charged with investigating and
paying claims for personal injuries due to air raids.3
A
rush of
work
under both schemes was expected on the outbreak of war.

Similar problems of creating a wartime administrative machine were
also
affecting those two departments which were to become known, on the
outbreak of war, as the Ministries of Food and Home Security. Ration
books for 45,000.000 people had already been printed and, during
August, iron rations for 4,000,000 evacuees were being distributed. At
the end of the month the machinery of food control was ready, but no
decisions had by then been taken by the Cabinet on what was to be
rationed, and how soon control was to operate after the outbreak of
war. It was, however, fully expected within the departments and by the
general public that rationing on an extensive scale would operate
immediately hostilities began.

August was a month of intense activity for the local authorities.
Their
heaviest tasks were plans for sending or receiving mothers and
children and organising civil defence. By the 2nd, 1,000,000 steel
shelters had been distributed. By the 8th, the strength of the civil
defence organisation had reached 1,493,000, though, by the Government's
calculations it was still short of over 430,000 volunteers. The biggest
deficiency, however, lay in quality. The training and equipment of this
army of volunteers was still far from adequate, while the casualty
services, particularly the first aid parties, were reported to be 'the
weakest link in the whole chain'.

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In contrast to September 1938 there was, however,
more public confidence in the state of Government's preparations on the
home front. When, for instance, the last peacetime debate on the civil
defence and emergency services took place in the House of Commons on
the 2nd August 1939, relatively little criticism was heard.4
The
vital question of equipment was not generally raised. No one wanted to
know anything about the Government's plan for helping those who might
be bombed out of their homes. The press, too, was much less critical
than it had been for many months. At the end of August, The Times, in a special article,
wrote enthusiastically of a vast civil defence organisation, standing
ready, equipped and trained. The evacuation and hospital schemes were
also, it was said, fully planned and prepared.5

On 10th August a trial blackout was held in London and South-East
1.30
a.m. there were 'almost rush-hour conditions' in Piccadilly Circus.6
Vast throngs of cars and sightseers turned out to experience, and
partly ruin, the trial. The following day The Times, which also carried a
report on the opening of the Nazi's war of nerves on Poland, remarked
that London was 'unruffled'.7

Neither The Times nor
the
sightseers in Piccadilly accurately reflected the mood of the nation.
The fear of war, and especially the kind of war that had for so long
been foreshadowed, manifested itself in many ways, though it affected
some people more than others. The attitude of 2,000,000 to 3,000,000
people, struggling along from hand-to-mouth on public relief or
unemployment pay,8 and living—as most of
them were—away from the
dangers to which Londoners felt they were exposed, was probably very
different from that of men and women with a definite and more respected
place in society. But there was no panic rush from London. A steady
stream of people left by road and rail, many of them presumably to take
up the accommodation they had reserved months before.9
By
1st
September, when Scotland Yard obligingly issued a list of routes out of
London for people leaving by car, the stream was considerable. From
Southampton, it was reported that 5,000 people had left within
forty-eight hours for America.10

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Despite the exodus of private persons and business firms,
there was great activity in London. The work of sandbagging, shuttering
and blacking-out was being energetically pushed forward. In the North,
the textile trade was experiencing its greatest boom since the First
World War. The Government had suddenly ordered millions of blankets.

One social phenomenon which passed unnoticed at the time was the
rush
into marriage. Perhaps fear precipitated many of these marriages; if
so, it was quite a different kind of fear from that caused by economic
hardship during the early nineteen-thirties when marriages were
postponed and even avoided. The months of August and September 1939 saw
the greatest flood of marriages ever counted in British statistics. No
comparable rise had occurred in 1914; it was not until the end of 1915
that the highest rate of the First World War was recorded—22.5
marriages per 1000 population. For July, August and September 1939, the
astonishingly high rate of 29.3 was reached.11

Did these differences reflect the ordinary man's feeling that the
margin of safety by which civilisation survives was wearing thing? Or
did they only mean that family separation was destined to become a more
potent cause of mental distress than the enemy's bombs.

With the signing of the German-Soviet pact of non-aggression on
23rd
August, the sense of an impending disaster spread rapidly. Behind the
confident assurances of preparedness by Government spokesmen there were
anxieties in Whitehall and Edinburgh about the emergency services. One
particular anxiety of the Health Departments was the state of the
arrangements for receiving evacuated mothers and children. Plans for
sending them out of the target areas were, by mid-August, nearly
complete. But local authorities had not been allowed to spend any money
on services to receive them. These authorities had been asking, from
early in 1939, for sanction to extend accommodation in infectious
diseases hospitals, to adapt premises as maternity homes, and to buy
such equipment, as furniture, crockery and bedding. The resources
available in the reception areas to provide certain welfare services
for nearly 4,000,000 refugees were quite inadequate.

The Ministry of Health had applied, at the beginning of 1939, for
permission to approve expenditure on various items. These items, which
it was thought essential to provide in advance, such as the adaptation
of premises for use as hostels and maternity homes, were estimated to
cost £405,000. But the Treasury questioned the need for much of
this expenditure. The provision of temporary sanitary conveniences at
rural railway stations and dispersal points was considered 'a waste of
money'. ' It is impossible to maintain all the decencies of

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life under war conditions.' The supply of clothing and
equipment for necessitous children was thought to be unnecessary. There
was, continued the Treasury, 'little justification' for the extension
of hospital accommodation for cases of infectious disease in the
reception areas. The argument went on until the middle of August. By
the 17th, when only £22,500 had been sanctioned, the Ministry of
Health was thoroughly alarmed and demanded from the Treasury freedom to
work out the evacuation scheme which had been authorised by the
Cabinet. The dispute was not referred to the Cabinet by the Minister of
Health. Assent was given to another instalment of expenditure on 23rd
August.

The Health Departments then authorised local authorities to incur
'such
reasonable expenditure as is necessary for the reception of evacuated
persons'.12 Regional medical
officers were told to approve such
expenditure as the cost of adapting premises as maternity homes, and
local authorities were informed that they could but without approval
such articles as crockery and cutlery. Authorities who were responsible
for evacuating children were authorised to make purchases locally of
boots, clothing and knapsacks up to £1 for every 200 children, on
the understanding that no publicity was given to such assistance.13
All this information was conveyed in circulars which did not reach most
of the local authorities until 28th August—six days before the outbreak
of war.

At the same time local authorities were asked to set up casualty
bureaux for the purposes of the hospital scheme, and four days later
hospital authorities were told to buy locally certain items of
equipment.14 On 2nd September a
large number of local authorities
were
asked to establish emergency feeding stations, and to consider the
desirability of 'improvising temporary shelter of some kind' for
homeless people.15 This circular did not,
however, reach the
authorities concerned until after the outbreak of war.

One result of this abrupt removal of the ban on expenditure as it
affected evacuation, the hospital scheme and other services, was an
immense buying rush during the last week of peace. The staff of local
authorities all over Britain hunted feverishly for crockery, furniture,
children's boots, clothing, bedding and hundreds of items. In addition,
large orders were placed at the last minute by the Health Departments,
some instances of which had already been given in the chapter on the
hospital scheme.16 A particular example
of the general equipment
problem which arose at the end of August 1939 was the purchase of
blankets and other items of bedding.

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When the billeting survey for the evacuation scheme was
carried out early in 1939 the offers of accommodation that were made
were conditional on the Government supplying to householders 4,200,000
blankets and 1,470,000 mattresses or beds.17
In
addition,
1,000,000–2,000,000 blankets were needed for the hospital scheme,18
first aid posts, ambulances, casualty trains and stretchers,19
while
the Army required 4,500,000–6,000,000. These figures, big as they were,
did not represent the total probable demand. No authority was given,
before the war, for the provision of blankets for homeless people in
rest centres and shelters, or for warden's posts.

Action to make provision for the demand came in driblets. By the
end of April 1939 contracts had been signed for 300,000 blankets for
hospitals and 165,000 for first aid posts and ambulances. The first
order for the evacuation scheme (for 500,000) was not placed until May.
Because of the delay in ordering, and the congestion in the trade which
resulted from the failure to coordinate demands, only 29,000 blankets
for the evacuation scheme had been received by 21st August. The
position with regard to mattresses and mackintosh overlays was very
similar, while the first order for camp beds for the evacuation scheme
was not placed until 15th August. Later in August, when Government
departments became very anxious about the equipment situation
generally, large additional orders were placed by the Ministry of
Health for beds, mattresses and pillows, and the first contracts were
signed for many items, including 260,000 nightshirts for hospital
patients. On the 25th the Ministry, in desperation, asked local
authorities to but blankets locally.20
Orders were also given
for
100,000 blankets to be cut from stocks of men's overcoating. On 29th
August, Lord Woolton broadcast a national appeal for the loan of
3,500,000 blankets. By begging, borrowing and buying, local authorities
obtained about 789,000 blankets and 20,000 camp beds for the evacuation
scheme.

The alarm that impelled these last minute attempts to bring the
emergency services to a state of readiness affected many agencies of
Government. Large numbers of shrouds and papier maché coffins
were ordered by local authorities, who were also busy requisitioning
car and about 6,000 trade vehicles as ambulances, and furniture vans
for the removal of dead bodies. Tents were hired by the Ministry of
Health to provide cover for 10,000 extra beds for air raid casualties,
as none of the hutted hospital units were ready. A circular on the
setting up of these tents was rushed out on 1st September 1939, and the
tents were hurriedly distributed round

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the country. By November 1939 many of them had been blown down.
Those still standing were soon removed, however, because their
startling whiteness was said to have made the local inhabitants
'panic-stricken'.

Buildings of all kinds were in great demand. Many schools, for
instance, were seized by the Army and the civil defence authorities.
The story of August 1914 was repeated. Then, large numbers of schools
had been invaded by voluntary organisations, school equipment turned
out, and the buildings converted into auxiliary hospitals long before
the military authorities required them.21 In
August and
September
1939
the need was different, the victim the same. This was particularly true
of the evacuation areas where many schools were suddenly requisitioned
to serve as first aid posts and for other civil defence purposes. For
the invasion in 1939 there was, however, more excuse, as it had been
assumed by the Education Departments that all schools in these areas
would remain closed for the duration of the war.

The policy of dividing the country into evacuation, neutral and
reception areas, and the decision that shelter protection was not
required for schools in the evacuation areas22
(since the children
would have been shifted to the country) led naturally to a wholesale
requisitioning of school buildings in these areas. The demand, indeed,
was so great, and the number of requisitioning authorities so many,
that a system of earmarking buildings on a central register maintained
by the War Office virtually broke down. Even in the neutral areas,
where local education authorities had been advised that shelter
protection, generally in the form of covered trenches, should be
provided, there was a considerable amount of commandeering of schools
by the military and other authorities.

In the evacuation and neutral areas of England and Wales some
2,000 elementary and secondary schools were wholly or partly occupied
by various authorities. Civil defence accounted for 1,692, the military
for 213, and the remainder were requisitioned for a variety of other
reasons. In addition, a number of schools were seized in reception
areas.23
This question of the use of school buildings for defence
purposes was part of the wider problem of a nation, endeavouring by any
and ever means, to protect the civilian population against a new form
of warfare. It involved, throughout the period of hostilities, an
increasing diversion of social equipment to

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meet the growing demands of war, both in its defensive and
aggressive phases. Some of the social consequences, which often
inflicted more lasting damage than reduction in civilian consumption of
domestic goods, form the background to later chapters.

While the requisitioning of schools and other buildings went on
apace at the end of August 1939, the enrolment and allocation of staff
for the emergency services was speeded up. On the 24th, school teachers
were asked to return from holiday and report for duty, part of the
staff of the Education Departments were earmarked for transfer to other
ministries, and doctors and nurses were enrolled in the emergency
medical service.

Parliament re-assembled on 24th August and at once enacted the
Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1939.24
This empowered the
King, by
Order in Council, to make such Defence Regulations as appeared to him
to be necessary or expedient for securing the public safety, the
defence of the realm, the maintenance of public order and the efficient
prosecution of the war, and for maintaining supplies and services
essential to the life of the community. This Act was followed, within
the next nine days, by an unprecedented volume of emergency
legislation, all of which had been carefully drafted and prepared by
the Government many months earlier. These measures were concerned with
a variety of wartime problems such as the repair of war damage, the
restriction of rents and mortgage interest, liability for war damage,
compensation for air raid injuries, the relief of distress and the
working of the courts.25

These Acts and the Regulations and Orders that issued from them
provided the authority for the early development of many of the wartime
social services. The State was assuming new, and in many respects wide
responsibilities for the well-being of individual members of society.
From its initial preoccupation with the cruder manifestations of total
war, expressed in such defensive policies as removing the injured to
hospital, the frightened to safety, and the dead to mortuaries, the
Government was to turn, under the pressure of circumstances and the
stimulus of a broader conception of social justice, to new fields of
constructive welfare policies.

--95--

But while much was to be gained before the war came to an end,
much of value was to be interrupted or lost. There were to be fewer
homes in Britain. About 3,500,000 dwellings were to be damaged by enemy
action, 222,000 were to be completely destroyed or damaged beyond
repair,26 housebuilding was to
slow down and stop, and the 2,000,000
new houses which might have come into existence but for the war were
still, six years later, items in a plan. The raising of the
school-leaving age to fifteen years, first provided for in 1918, had
eventually been timed to take effect on 1st September 1939, but th war
was to mean postponement for another eight years. The 2,000,000
children
in classes exceeding forty in elementary schools in England and Wales
were to find themselves, by 1946, further squeezed for space and
attention, despite a decline in the child population, and a reduction
in the elementary school population by over 420,000.27
The
provision
of
a cancer service was to be deferred for nine years, the Criminal
Justice Bill of 1938 was to be pigeon-holed for longer, while the
building of welfare clinics, sanatoria, maternity homes, schools and
other institutions was to come to an end for the best part of a decade.
Meanwhile, a mass of social equipment in the shape of hospitals,
schools, village institutes and halls, swimming baths, playing fields
and public transport was to be diverted from civilian use. The claims
of the war machine, in an armed operation base like Britain, made large
inroads upon the services, institutions and equipment originally
provided for the civilian population.28 But
all these
subtractions
and
losses, though serious in their cumulative effects on physical and
moral standards, were to be judged of little account when measured
against the lists of disorganised and separated families.

These separations began at the end of August 1939 as the movement
from London of private evacuees steadily increased, the first
preparatory measures were ordered to bring the emergency services into
action. The Government decided that the machinery for evacuation ,and
for putting the hospitals in a position to receive air raid casualties
should begin to operate. On 26th August, hospitals were told to set up
the additional beds they had received and to restrict the admission of
patients to acute cases. On the following day, billeting and
requisitioning powers were delegated to the clerks of local
authorities, along with power to appoint billeting officers.29
Evacuation rehearsals were held at the schools on the 28th, and, on the
same

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day a start was made in clearing patients from some of the
hospitals included in the emergency scheme.

On the 30th, the day when the evacuation of children from Paris
began, stand-by orders were issued in London. The next morning, the
Cabinet decided that the exodus from all evacuation areas in Britain
should start. The Government's order was received at the London County
Council's headquarters at 11.7 a.m.; the transport authorities
confirmed that they were ready, and from 11.19 a.m. onwards signals and
instructions were sent out to executive officers. For the rest of the
day the press and the wireless were flooded with pre-arranged notices
and announcements. 'All those in the priority classes may go even if
they have not registered.' Do nothing to impede the working of the
Government's plans.' 'If you have work to do remain at your post.'
'Women and children first.'

On Friday, 1st September, 1939, the transport arrangements to
evacuate nearly 4,000,000 mothers and children from the vulnerable
areas of Britain began to operate. The next prepared stage in the
hospital plan was also put in motion; some tens of thousands of
patients were turned out and sent home, others were removed by rail and
ambulance to hospitals in safer areas. Simultaneously, thousands of
converted coaches, cars and other vehicles took up their ambulance
stations; thirty civilian casualty trains were staffed and sent to
their berths; some 2,200 doctors and 15,000 nurses were called up and
posted to casualty hospitals, and the civil defence organisation was
mobilised. At sunset, the country was blacked out. Nearly six year were
to pass before the evening lights were again to stream unchecked from
British homes.

Footnotes

1 The
contrast with the First World War is striking. In 1905 the War Office
decided that there was no need to prepare in advance any expansion of
hospital accommodation in the United Kingdom. There would be time
enough, it was considered, to begin building hutted hospitals when
mobilisation was ordered. (Official
History of the War 1914–18, Medical Service, Vol. 1, Chapter
I.).

2 The
subject of the regional system is the concern of the civil defence
volume in this series of histories.

8 In
July
1939 the number of unemployed in Britain stood at 1,256,000. For the
year 1938–9 the average number of persons in England and Wales in
receipt of institutional and domiciliary relief totalled 1,050,000. For
Scotland the figure was 226,000.

23 These
figures, which are known to be incomplete, were obtained in December
1939 by the Board of Education when the first attempt was made to
review the problem of schooling in the evacuation and neutral areas. A
fuller account of this matter is the concern of the education volume in
this series of histories. [Never published]

25 In
later chapters reference will be made to some of this legislation. The
Acts which were placed on the statute book during the last week of
peace, and which are relevant to the history of the social services,
are listed below:—